


careful little lion man

by brave_muffin



Series: two wrongs don't make a pie [2]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, F/M, M/M, Mukuro is doing her best, Pushing Daisies AU, direct sequel to ‘you make a fool of death with your beauty’, fuyuhiko has so so many insecurities but he loves peko and is doing his best, peko is sad a lot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-07-02 21:13:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15804684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brave_muffin/pseuds/brave_muffin
Summary: "Hey, Hajime, I have another case for you."- also known as the one where Mukuro is an ex-veteran turned waitress and mechanic, Fuyuhiko is hopelessly in love with Peko, and Peko is just trying to keep her business running. Pushing Daisies AU.





	1. i've missed you, darling

chapter one – i’ve missed you, darling

 

Fuyuhiko thinks that despite everything, he’s coping quite well.

He gets up every day and goes to work in his office that is close enough to the Pie Hole that he can walk there, he takes on new cases, he asks for help from Hajime.

But things are definitely different. He feels it in chest.

Then again, that might just be the bullet stuck in his heart, so he doesn’t really know.

(There’s a scar on his chest, you know. Peko traces it sometimes in the middle of the night.

His chest hurts when she does this, but not because of the wound.)

 

//

 

Mukuro Ikusaba looks better than she did when she essentially lived in the sewers. Her hair has been washed and it falls straight down to her shoulders. Her face isn’t covered in dirt and filth and now you can see the light dashing of freckles that dot her nose and cheeks.

Currently, she’s sleeping on Kazuichi’s sofa.

“I live in fear, bro,” Kazuichi whines during one of his breaks. “I think she’s going to kill me!”

Fuyuhiko snorts while Hajime frowns. “Why do you think that, Kaz?”

“She’s always glaring at me, man! She looks _murderous,_ ” Kazuichi says.

“I didn’t know that you knew such long words,” Fuyuhiko gasps. Hajime grins while Kazuichi makes a face. “Besides, she won’t kill you in your home.”

Kazuichi looks suspicious. “Why?”

“Because it’d be easier to kill you at work. All that heavy machinery. And she has access to all of it because you gave her a job helping you out.” Fuyuhiko pops a slice of apple into his mouth and checks his watch. “Oh, look at that. Your break’s over. Back on the clock!” Fuyuhiko smiles cheerily at him.

Kazuichi stares at him with a pale face and stumbles out of The Pie Hole on shaky legs.

Fuyuhiko turns to see Hajime rolling his eyes at him. “If he fires her then that’s on you, you know that right?”

He shrugs. “She’ll still have a job waitressing here. Besides, Kaz won’t fire her because he needs to live with her. He won’t want to induce her wrath.”

Hajime chuckles and starts wiping down the counter. He glances up at him, almost worriedly. “You don’t mind her working here, do you?”

Fuyuhiko shakes his head. “Nah.” And he means it to. He knows that Mukuro didn’t mean to pull the trigger, that it’d been her hand clenching because of the pain that had spread through her back.

Besides, it was hard to hold a grudge against her. A few days after Hajime had brought her back, she had started her first day working at The Pie Hole. Fuyuhiko had come in to see Peko and she had marched up to him as though he was her mission.

“I’m sorry,” she’d half-shouted and Fuyuhiko had only not jumped because of years of controlling his reactions. “I can only apologise for any pain I have caused you. If there is anything I can do to make this right, then I will do it!”

Then she had stood in front of him, gazing at him expectantly but without making any eye contact.

“It’s – alright,” Fuyuhiko had said eventually. “Don’t sweat it.” He had seen Peko peering out of her office with her face carefully blank. Fuyuhiko had stared at Mukuro for a moment. Her hands were clenched around a notebook with _Just Keep Swimming!_ printed on the front of it in gold. She’d looked scared, Fuyuhiko had thought. As though everything she’d thought that she could rely on had crumpled around her.

Fuyuhiko knew exactly what that felt like.

“I’m…I’m sorry about your sister. Sorry she didn’t have your back,” he’d said before he could stop himself. Mukuro had blinked at him with dark eyes before she’d nodded and scurried into the back to talk to Hajime about something.

(Sometimes he wonders if this is what his own sister is like. But then he thinks he’s just projecting.)

“Peko doesn’t like her,” Fuyuhiko says.

Hajime nods. “Yeah, I know. I had to argue with her for days until she let Mukuro work here.”

“Yeah, she told me about it,” Fuyuhiko says.

“I mean, I get why she doesn’t like her. She did technically kill you. It’s hard to forgive those who hurt the people you care about.” Hajime frowns down at the counter and Fuyuhiko wonders who he’s thinking about.

He settles on humming in agreement and they sit in silence for a while.

 

//

 

Here’s the thing: Fuyuhiko doesn’t really buy into the whole ‘friendship saves the world’ trope or even the whole friendship thing anyway. But he thinks that if anyone was his friend then he supposes he’d pick Hajime.

Besides, being able to say that he has a friend that can raise the dead is pretty cool he guesses.

(He had a friend once, when he younger. Back when his mother was alive and his father was someone that he thought he could trust whole-heartedly.

His friend is gone now but sometimes Hajime smiles and Fuyuhiko thinks that he can see him still.

But he’s probably just projecting again, so he ignores it.)

 

//

 

“We’re starting a new club,” Chiaki announces one day.

“Another one?” Fuyuhiko groans.

“There’s already a club?” Mukuro asks, quietly.

Watson barks softly and Mukuro lifts a slow hand and pets her. Watson looks happy.

All four of them are crammed into a booth an hour before The Pie Hole closes. Fuyuhiko wonders if Mukuro is meant to be working or not but decides that Peko is better suited to reinforcing such things.

“Yes, we have the Solving Murders Club,” Chiaki explains. “We have jackets. I’ll order you one.”

Mukuro blinks at her. “…Thank you…”

“Not a great gift, you don’t need to thank her,” Fuyuhiko says and gets elbowed in the ribs by Chiaki.

“Anyway, this club is just for us. It’s called Dealing With The Fact That We Were Dead But Now Aren’t Thanks To Hajime.” Fuyuhiko and Mukuro stare at her. “The Club,” she adds. Fuyuhiko snorts.

“Are we getting jackets for this club as well?” Mukuro asks. Everything she says, she says quietly Fuyuhiko notices. He’s also noticed that most of the time she will say nothing at all. She seems to like Chiaki though and he gets why. Chiaki is too lovely to most people for them to _not_ like her.

“Nope,” Chiaki beams. “I was thinking pins.”

“Quite a lot to put on a pin,” Fuyuhiko points out.

“It’s a big pin,” Chiaki replies. Watson woofs her approval.

Somehow, Fuyuhiko can hear Hajime sigh from across the room.

 

//

 

Here’s the thing: Fuyuhiko does like Chiaki. He’s happy that her and Hajime finally got over themselves and started dating. He’s happy he knows her, is something that he’d think if he was feeling particularly cheesy.

She came by with flowers a few days after Hajime had brought him back.

“I got you some lilies because I didn’t know what your favourite flower was,” she had said.

“I don’t have a favourite flower,” he’d replied.

“Everyone has a favourite flower,” she had said and thrust the lilies into his hands.

(“It’s daffodils,” he’d muttered to her in The Pie Hole a week later.

She had grinned at him and he wondered how one person could feel so much like family even when they weren’t.)

 

//

 

Peko stares at him sometimes and it worries him. She stares at him as though she isn’t sure if he’s really there, as though if she looks away then he’ll disappear.

One day when Fuyuhiko drops in just before The Pie Hole shuts to drive Peko home and he finds her at her desk with her head in her hands.

“Peko?” he asks and shuts the office door behind him. Hajime is already packing outside and Fuyuhiko knows that he would leave with Nagito soon.

Peko doesn’t answer but she does tilt her head up to look at him and he sees that the rims of her eyes are red.

Fuyuhiko blinks, stunned for a moment before he races around her desk and drops to his knees, one hand reaching for her hands, the other cupping her face. “Darling, what’s wrong?”

She stares at him blankly and he feels worry freeze his veins. “Darling?” he asks, weakly. He thinks that Peko is the most important woman, no person, in his life and he thinks that she’s the only one he’s ever opened up to and he thinks that god he might just love her, and he thinks that she’s scaring him.

“You were dead for three days,” she says, without any emotion, staring at some point above his head and Fuyuhiko flinches. They never really talked about it. They dodged around the topic as much as they could. They had just tried to fit back into their regular lives as much as they could, and Fuyuhiko knew that at one point they would have to talk about it, but he would give anything for it not to be now. “You were dead for three days and I had to put you in the fuckin’ tub with icy water and go to work.” She looks him in the eyes suddenly and Fuyuhiko feels like he’s drowning. “I talked to you. Do you remember it? Told you about my day, how Hajime was doing. He was so desperate to get out of the hospital, to bring you back. But he’d had a bullet in his collarbone, so he had to wait three days before they could release him. So, for three days, I had to act like everything was normal, that you were just sleeping back in my apartment like that time you got the measles, but you weren’t, you were so pale, and I was so fucking _useless_ and I – “

Peko chokes on a sob and Fuyuhiko drops his hands to wrap his arms around her waist and slide her out of her chair and onto his lap. She cries into his chest, just above his heart and he shifts them so he’s leaning against her desk.

Fuyuhiko wishes that he was Hajime because he always knows what to say to make everything ok. He settles for stroking her hair back and murmuring small promises.

He wonders, not for the first time, if everyone elses’ lives would be better if he wasn’t such a mess.

With Peko crying in his arms, he thinks that the answer is yes.

 

//

 

Here’s the thing: Fuyuhiko and Peko have been dating for the past two years and he’s still not sure how he managed to get so lucky.

He remembers how it had started. One day, Fuyuhiko had dropped by The Pie Hole to get Hajime to help him with a case but only Peko had been there, standing behind the counter and frowning at her laptop. He had thought she looked beautiful.

He had been about to turn and leave when she had spoken. “Do you think that daffodils would look nice in the centre of each of the tables?”

“Why’re you asking me?” he had retorted and wanted to punch himself for being so rude.

She hadn’t blinked and just kept staring at him with wildly intelligent eyes. “Because I value your opinion,” she had replied.

A warmth had blossomed in his chest and before he could stop himself, he had said, “Only in the spring.” And then he had walked out as quickly as he thought was socially accepted.

(A week later, he had left a daffodil on her desk and a week after that she had kissed him in a coffee shop.

He still doesn’t know what she sees in him but, he just counts his blessings that he’s got any time at all with her, even if he doesn’t deserve it.)

 

//

 

There’s a new case. Fuyuhiko reads over the file that a client had given him in his office as he makes his way over to The Pie Hole.

There isn’t a lot. A woman stabbed fifteen times around the back of an abandoned bowling alley. The victim was aged twenty-four. Body was discovered by her friend who had gone looking for her.

Fuyuhiko walks into The Pie Hole and sees Hajime in the back, pushing a pie tin into the oven. Nagito and Mukuro are skating and walking respectively to serve customers. Kazuichi and Chiaki sit in front of the counter, Watson with her head resting on Chiaki’s knees, Peko stood in front of them, smiling wryly at Kazuichi.

Everything feels the way it’s supposed to. Of course, he can still remember the press of Peko’s head against his chest as she had cried, the warmth of Kazuichi’s body as he gave him a tight hug when he first came to The Pie Hole after everything, the lilies that were in a vase on Peko’s windowsill.

But still, this feels familiar. This feels like home.

 

//

 

Here’s the thing: nothing ever goes the way you want it to. And Fuyuhiko should have learned this years ago.


	2. memories, memories

chapter two – memories, memories

 

There are certain moments in Peko’s life that she thinks are permanently scarred into her skin.

The last time she saw her mother; her flushed angry face, her mouth wide open as she screamed at her to never return.

The last letter she received from her father, begging her to come back.

(The first time Fuyuhiko kissed her, the taste of caramel and coffee on her tongue.

Seeing Hajime for the second time: her dressed to the nines, him dressed as though he had nothing he cared for anymore, both of them stranded and alone.)

Sometimes, Fuyuhiko stares at her, sadly, and she wonders if he can see it, her, all of her, etched into her bones.

She hopes not.

 

//

 

“What’s your opinion on the species of the platypus?”

Peko stares at Kazuichi. “Why are you talking like that?”

He pushes his new pair of circular glasses up his nose and gazes at her gravely. “Because I have become…” He pauses for dramatic effect.

The moment stretches out. He’s still staring at her in the eyes.

Chiaki leans across him to speak to Peko. “Do you want to have a sleepover at Hajime’s on Saturday?”

“I think when you pass the age of twenty-five, you legally cannot call it a sleepover,” Peko replies. Chiaki doesn’t blink. “Sure,” she sighs.

Chiaki smiles and slides back onto her stool. “Great! See Valentine’s is on the Sunday, but we can just go our separate ways on that morning, ya know?”

Peko just nods. Chiaki loves group activities and Peko doesn’t have the heart to ever decline any of her invitations.

“An intellectual!” Kazuichi announces.

“What are you talking about?” Peko asks. Kazuichi’s face falls and she grins.

“I have become an intellectual,” Kazuichi says. “Therefore, I must speak in riddles.”

“You haven’t said any riddles,” Chiaki points out.

“Yeah, I don’t know any,” he replies.

Peko hates that she laughs.

 

//

 

Here’s the thing: Peko remembers her mother’s words more than anything.

_You’ll make nothing of yourself. And when you crash and burn, I won’t allow you to crawl back, no matter how much you beg._

Hajime smiles at her with his whole body these days; she walks through the kitchen to her office and he grins at her, his shoulders relaxed, his hands open.

Chiaki slides her hard candies – always butterscotch, her favourite – whenever she thinks Peko looks sad.

Kazuichi offers to give her rocket launchers on her car. She mostly declines.

Nagito refills her mug before she even has to ask.

And Fuyuhiko is alive.

(She thinks she’s done all right for herself, all things considered.)

 

//

 

It’s February and it’s still cold outside.

Fuyuhiko grumbles about it as he gets dressed for work.

“I don’t get why it’s still snowing,” he says, shouldering on a duffle coat and reaching for his grey scarf. “It’s _February._ ”

Peko hums in response as she sits on the edge of their bed, pulling on her boots. Suddenly his face appears as he kneels in front of her, his hands coming to rest on her knees, his thumbs drawing light circles through her trousers. He raises an eyebrow. She stays silent.

“Darling, we talked about this,” he sighs. She thinks he looks pretty in the morning. She thinks he always looks pretty, all light hair and intense eyes. She reaches a hand out and runs her own thumb over the crease in his brow until his frown disappears and then lays her palm on his cheek. He leans into the touch but still looks at her expectantly.

“Chiaki invited us for a sleepover on Saturday,” she says.

His frown returns. “I don’t think we can call it a sleepover at our age.” Peko cracks a smile and his eyes light up briefly.

“That’s what I said,” she replies. A smile makes an appearance on his face before he goes back to staring at her intently.

“Are you going to tell me what going on in that head of yours?” Fuyuhiko asks.

Peko blinks at him. She doesn’t know what to tell him. _I had to drag your lifeless body out of the sewers with my heart in my throat? I talked to you for three days, but you never replied?_

“Darling – “

“It’s all been said,” she interjects. He looks sad, still leaning into her hand. She strokes his cheekbone idly. “There’s no need to go over it all again.”

“If it’ll make you feel better – “

“It won’t,” she says, firmly. His skin feels warm beneath her fingertips. She almost tells him that it all feels like a dream. That sometimes she’s convinced that she was the one who died – her, with her cold, pale skin – and he’s the one who agonised over it, who lifted her up and into the tub, who held her hand, tracing mindless patterns for hours on end. She could almost believe it with how heartbroken he looks, kneeling in front of her.

She leans down and presses a kiss to his forehead. She feels his cheek flush, but he still looks at her sadly when she pulls back. “We should get to work,” she says. “Don’t you have a new case?”

He nods. “I need to do some questioning with Hajime after work, but I’ll be home before 9.” And with that, he leans up and kisses her, a flash of warmth against her lips, and then he’s gone.

Peko sits on the edge of her bed for a moment before she gets up to go to work as well.

 

//

 

Here’s the thing: Peko remembers the first time she saw Fuyuhiko. He had been talking to Hajime outside The Pie Hole, both of their heads close together as they had a whispered argument.

Hajime had come in to grab his jacket and Peko had asked who was outside.

“A private investigator,” he’d answered, rolling his eyes. “Kind of a dick but I guess we’re working together now.”

Peko had hummed as she looked out the window. Fuyuhiko had been leaning against a streetlamp, made up of dark angles and harsh light.

He looked like a dick, she supposed.

(A year later, she kissed him hard underneath that streetlamp before she headed into work.

“Fuyuhiko looks like he has a concussion,” Hajime had said as he entered the kitchen. “Do you have any idea why?”

“Nope,” she had replied. “Not a clue.”)

 

//

 

Peko doesn’t like Mukuro.

Not consciously. If she could decide to like her, she would. It would make going to work easier. Besides, she did seem nice, if just skittish; all wide eyes and hunched shoulders.

But Peko just can’t. Because as much as she wants to forget it and move on, as much as Hajime tells her that she hadn’t meant to pull the trigger, that it was just her finger clenching because she had gotten shot herself, she can’t get over the fact that she had pointed a gun at Fuyuhiko and Hajime.

Whether or not she intended to actually pull the trigger, she still pointed a weapon at them.

Peko doesn’t know if she can forgive that.

If the wide berth Mukuro gives her is any indication, she knows that as well.

Chiaki asks her about it, sliding the third butterscotch of the day over the counter towards her.

“Mukuro thinks you hate her,” Chiaki says, her hands folded in front of her.

“I do hate her,” Peko replies, popping the butterscotch into her mouth. She has a pile of paperwork on her desk, but she’ll probably just stay late, same as Fuyuhiko. She doesn’t think she can bare to deal with the absolute silence of being home alone.

Chiaki purses her lips. She grabs her fork and taps it against the side of her plate. “She’s _trying_ , Peko.”

“That’s nice,” says Peko.

“Peko,” Chiaki snaps. Peko stares at her unflinchingly. Chiaki deflates quickly. She would be terrible as a lawyer Peko thinks. “She’s doing her best but…she feels terrible because of how you’re acting.”

“She pointed a gun at my boyfriend and my oldest friend. She _killed_ my boyfriend,” Peko hissed. “If she feels terrible then is that such a bad thing?”

Chiaki stares at her sombrely and for a moment, Peko is back in her apartment, Fuyuhiko on his knees, looking at her the exact same way. She shakes her head roughly and turns on her heel. “I’ll be in my office,” she says over her shoulder.

She supposes she’ll just need to do her paperwork now.

 

//

 

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” Hajime answers immediately, the way he always does when she talks to him like this, bare and fragile. His hands are covered in flour. Peko stares at them.

“Do you…How have you forgiven Mukuro?”

Hajime blinks. He slowly chops an apple, thinking. “I don’t really know. I mean when Chiaki first proposed that I bring her back, I didn’t want to. I mean, she killed Tsumiki, Fuyuhiko and threatened me with a gun.” He pauses, gathers up the apple slices and drops them in a bowl. “But, I don’t know. She’s genuine, Peko. She wants to do better. I just thought, who am I to stop her from doing that?”

Peko looks at her feet. “I don’t think I can…just forget about it.”

Hajime smiles at her. “You know that’s ok, right? You don’t have to forget what she did. I just try to focus on what she’s doing now. She picks flowers on her way to work for in here.” He gestures at the large window that’s next to the back-entrance door. A yellow vase holds a few daffodils, a bluebell and a handful of daisies, all bound together with a piece of string. “She picks a lot of weeds but – “ Hajime shrugs, “I don’t have the heart to tell her.”

Peko glances at him. “Do you trust her?”

“I’d like to,” Hajime replies. “She’s trying, so we’re all trying as well.” He slides her a box of cherries. She takes it with shaky hands. “I’ll tell Chiaki to stop pestering you,” he grins. “I think she just wants everyone to get along, so it upsets her when that isn’t happening. I’ll just to try to communicate the fact that we’re not exactly the average group of friends.”

Peko smiles at that and Hajime smiles back.

(Peko leaves Mukuro a cherry just before her shift ends.

It doesn’t feel like forgiveness yet, but it’s something.)

 

//

 

Here’s the thing: Hajime is Peko’s best friend. She loves him because of how natural their friendship is.

She remembers how she felt when they first opened The Pie Hole, a blackhole in her stomach that screamed how everything was going to collapse in on itself, how she was building a future on an unstable foundation.

She told Hajime this, a month into the job. They’d been sitting side by side, leaning against the wall of the kitchen.

“I know,” Hajime had said. “I feel it too. Having something when you’ve had nothing is terrifying.”

(Every year on the anniversary of The Pie Hole opening, August 15th, they still sit together against the wall and talk, an apple pie sat between them.

Peko thinks that it’s one of her best traditions.)

 

//

 

There’s an evidence board above their bed. Peko wonders why Fuyuhiko doesn’t hang it up in his office or his own apartment that he never stays at, but she never asks.

When she finally gets home, she sees him sitting on the floor, sticking newspaper clippings onto the cork board with coloured pins.

He looks up at her, red string hanging from his mouth. “Darling,” he greets, though it comes out muffled. He pulls the string out and gestures for her to come closer.

She drops her bag by her nightstand and sits next to him. “Is this for the new case?”

He nods. “Hajime didn’t have time to come talk to the victim with me, so I just came home and started on this.”

Peko looks at the board. At the top is the victim’s name: AOI ASAHINA. There are multiple articles dotted around describing how she was stabbed and found in an abandoned bowling alley. At one side there’s a piece of card with the word ‘GIRLFRIEND?’ written on it in Fuyuhiko’s writing.

“I have a good feeling about this case, Peko. I don’t know why I just do,” Fuyuhiko says, turning to her with bright eyes.

She stares at him and thinks about how he brought her daffodils every Saturday on the run up to her birthday last year, thinks about the daffodils in the yellow vase in the kitchen.

“Alright,” she says. “I trust your judgement.” And kisses him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it has been.....so long.  
> i am so sorry, i have a showcase with eight plays to be performed in it coming up and literally everything that could go wrong, has. oh lord not even gonna get into it omg.  
> anyway, hajime and peko's friendship means a lot to me, im sad.  
> my tumblr is @bravemccalll if u wanna yell at me which i accept.  
> until next time! - nic


	3. hyper-aware of my grief

chapter three – hyper-aware of my grief

 

Fuyuhiko remembers a time when he didn’t live in a constant state of anxiety, when his lungs didn’t feel empty when he breathed out.

His mother had blonde hair just like him; she used to brush it for what felt like hours, Fuyuhiko sitting next to her, his head leaning against her knee, his hands tapping on his shins, counting to three hundred, just to know if he could.

“Do you think I could count to a million?” he asked her once.

“You can do anything you want, darling,” she had replied, the bruises around her wrists like dark bracelets. “Anything.”

Fuyuhiko had hummed and wrapped his fingers around the purple colouring. He had read a book about a superhero who could take away people’s injuries and inflict it upon themselves but when he pulled away, his own wrists stayed pale and unblemished.

She had smiled at him sadly as though she knew what he was trying to do, the way she always knew exactly what he’s thinking.

(He still counts, usually when he can’t sleep.

678…

679…)

 

//

 

Chiaki reminds Fuyuhiko of his mother when she’s tired, when she wanders into the Pie Hole, all long sleeved jumpers and fluffy hair. Something about her dulled excitement makes him remember when his mother used to make him breakfast in the morning and push his own hair back to press a kiss to his forehead.

The day Fuyuhiko is meant to go on his investigation with Hajime, Chiaki comes in with her glasses perched on the end of her nose, lifting them to rub her eye sleepily.

“I told you not to stay up all night on the computer,” Hajime tuts, reaching a gloved hand out to brush her hair out of her eyes.

“What was she doing?” Peko asks.

“Her boss is letting her work from here instead of having to move back to her old apartment, but Chiaki took this to mean ‘Stay up all night coding’.“ Hajime frowns at her, his arms folded tightly across his chest.

Chiaki catches his clothed wrist and presses a kiss to his palm. “Sorry, sweetheart,” she murmurs. And drops his hand, letting her head fall onto the counter.

“Wow,” Nagito marvels, slowing to a stop next to the now passed out Chiaki. “She’s completely different when she’s tired. She’s like a whole new person.”

Hajime snorts, his cheeks faintly tinged red.

Fuyuhiko isn’t paying attention to any of it. All he can see is brushed back hair, light in the sunshine coming through the windows. All he can hear is her hushed voice, quiet and apologetic. All he can see is his mother, sitting next to him, offering a sad smile and a small ‘I’m sorry, darling, I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again’.

He doesn’t hear any of his friends shout his name when he runs to the bathroom and empties his stomach of its breakfast into the nearest toilet.

He rests his clammy forehead on his forearm and coughs. It’s been a while, he thinks. Almost two years. New record. And throws up again.

 

//

 

Here’s the thing: Fuyuhiko’s mother had a quiet voice, always softly spoken, rarely sharp. She used to twirl around on the tips of her toes, her hair lifting and seeming to dance along with her. Her eyes were golden, just like Fuyuhiko’s and she used to say that that meant they were in their own club, just for them.

These are all useless facts that Fuyuhiko repeats to himself, desperate to keep her alive, even if it’s just in the corner of his vision, a quick glimpse of skirts swirling and bruised arms.

(5898…

5899…)

 

//

 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Hajime asks.

“Nope,” Fuyuhiko answers.

“Right.”

Fuyuhiko drives in blissful silence for a few more minutes.

“It’s just, you know I’m always here if you ever need me,” Hajime says.

“Yep.”

“Right,” Hajime repeats and sinks into the passenger seat.

Fuyuhiko wants to sigh but stops himself. He wishes he could be more like Hajime – Hajime who isn’t afraid to say what he’s feeling, who isn’t afraid of what will become of his demons if he voices them, brings them to life.

He clenches his fingers around the steering wheel and resists the urge to punch something.

“You should take three deep breaths,” Mukuro mutters from the backseat. Fuyuhiko almost jumps – he forgot she was back there.

“What?”

“Whenever I get angry, I take three deep breaths and by the end of it, I feel less like I want to break my own hand trying to break something else.” She stares out the side window, fiddling with her scarf. “It works,” she says and then closes her eyes as though to physically show she’s done talking.

Fuyuhiko wants to snap at her and tell her that breathing won’t stop him thinking about his dead mother and how now his friends apparently act like her but remembers Peko and how she may not like Mukuro, she doesn’t like him antagonising people for no reason even more.

So, he takes three deep breaths and it actually works. He can feel Hajime’s eyes on him, but he has nothing to say that will even begin to explain how he feels so he just looks in the rear-view mirror for a second before glancing away.

He makes eye contact with her for a moment, but it seems like enough to show his gratitude.

 

//

 

Here’s the thing: a year before everything went to shit and Fuyuhiko was on the road on his own and his mother was left behind with his father, she sat him down.

“You have a sister, darling,” she had said, her hair pulled into a tight ponytail, her face drawn and tired.

“I have a _what_?” he had repeated. He had only turned sixteen a few days ago and he thought this was the world’s worst late birthday present.

“Yes, she’s…she’s eight now. She’s not mine,” she added and Fuyuhiko understood immediately why she looked so beaten down. “She’s from one of your father’s...other women.”

Fuyuhiko hadn’t said anything except reach out and pull her into a tight hug.

And if her hands dug into his back just a little too hard, then he didn’t mention it.

(Mukuro reminds him of what he thought his sister would be like – dark hair like his father, quiet and pale. Back then he had wanted her to be sad just because her existence made his mother sad but one look into Mukuro’s dark eyes and he realises he wouldn’t wish that on anyone. It’s how his mother looked towards the end.

10,201…

10,202…)

 

//

 

“Why is Mukuro with us again?”

“Because I thought leaving her with a tired Chiaki with no filter and a Peko who is already on edge because of…this morning was just a ticking time bomb waiting to happen,” Hajime says, reaching around to open Mukuro’s door for her without a second thought, barely seeing her surprised face as she crept out the motor.

“Right,” Fuyuhiko says. “Well, this is a great crew.” Mukuro blinks. Hajime gives him an unimpressed look and closes the car door. Fuyuhiko prefers this. He prefers unamused-Hajime to the Hajime who treats him like he’s made out of glass.

All three of them made their way into the morgue, Fuyuhiko sliding a stack of a notes to the man in charge who scuttled off to get the body of Aoi Asahina.

“Anything you want to ask her, Mukuro?” Hajime asks.

Mukuro just shakes her head. “No, I…I don’t want to mess anything up.”

Hajime frowns. “Nonsense, if you have any questions you think will lead to the killer then you should ask them.”

Mukuro squints at her shoes and just nods.

The body is wheeled in and the man leaves them alone with it.

“You ready?” Hajime asks. Fuyuhiko nods. And Hajime taps the corpse.

 

//

 

Here’s the thing: Fuyuhiko remembers the day it all went downhill with perfect clarity.

He remembers not having breakfast because he had slept in too late and missed it. He remembers having to swipe a banana from the kitchen. He remembers walking into the living room and seeing his uncle straddling his mother’s chest, his knees holding her arms down, punching her face so hard that blood was already staining the hardwood floors, his knuckles, her pale hair.

Fuyuhiko’s vision went white and before he knew it, he had thrown his uncle off of her and was desperately shaking her, asking her to wake up. Her nose was broken and her cheek was cracked and blood was spilling out of her mouth and trickling down and colouring everything it touched and no matter what Fuyuhiko did, he couldn’t take it away, couldn’t give himself the broken bones, the blood, the bruises.

(Later, after he carried her to the hospital and had his uncle arrested, he found out that his mother had snapped at his uncle for disrespecting her son, for calling her precious boy a ‘sissy’.

Fuyuhiko’s never drowned in guilt like that.

15,642…

15,643…)

 

//

 

Aoi Asahina is very chatty and smiles at all of them as though she doesn’t know she’s dead. “Hello! How are you all?”

“Fine,” Hajime answers at the time Fuyuhiko says, “No time for that.”

Fuyuhiko rolls his eyes and presses on. “Do you know who killed you?”

“I’ve been _killed_?” Aoi asks. “Well that explains why my back was sore for a second there.”

“Yes, you were stabbed in the back fifteen times,” Hajime tells her, his eyes trained on his watch.

“Wow,” she says. “That’s a lot.”

“So, you don’t know who did this to you?” Fuyuhiko double checks. Aoi nods. “So, why were you at the bowling alley in the first place?”

“I was meeting up with my girlfriend, Sakura. She left me a note,” Aoi says, frowning. “But she wouldn’t…”

“Where’s the note now,” Mukuro asks, her voice as loud as Fuyuhiko has ever heard it, her gaze entirely on Aoi.

“My bedroom, I think,” Aoi blinks. “But it wasn’t Sakura, hones- “

Hajime reaches a quick hand out and taps her shoulder, her body slumping down once more.

All three of them stand in silence for a moment.

“Well,” Fuyuhiko says. “We might just be able to make a detective out of you yet.”

Mukuro smiles at him for the first time and everything just might be ok.

 

//

 

Here’s the thing: Fuyuhiko sometimes taps the numbers into Peko’s side, a steady drumbeat of his own torture. She always smooths a hand down his face when he does this, as a grounding reminder that he’s down here on Earth, not up in the stars with his mother and the numbers that he’s accumulated over the years.

(“Do you think I could count to a million?” he had asked her.

“You can do anything you want, darling,” she had replied, but she hadn’t told him that she wouldn’t be there to see it.

19,999…

20,000…)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god this is so sad and short and im sorry lmao  
> ill try to make the next chapter more happy and have that 'everythings shit but we love each other' vibe that we all love  
> my tumblr is @bravemccalll if u wanna yell at me for hurting our fave emo son  
> until next time - nic


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